How does Auden treat the theme of love in funeral blues and lullaby

Egor Granon
TS2
Auden poetry essay
How does auden treat the theme of love in his peoms ?

Funeral Blues and Lullaby are two poems in which Auden treats the theme of love. Through this first one he explores love through a peom in the form of a classical elegy mourning the loss of a loved one whereas in the second Auden portrays love through more of a present situation thing where the speaker has his loved one in his arms and where he goes on to affirm the value of love in a world where everything ends. We will analyse how Auden treats the theme of love in each of his poems. Auden begins Funeral Blues by calling for silence of the everyday objects of life, he wants to “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,/ Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone”.The poet is asking himself how everything can be so normal after what has happened and how life can just move on. He wants everyone to show their respect with total silence, for them to all be aware of the passing of his loved one and the pain this is giving him. He wants to be able to mourn the loss of his loved one in complete peace and calm and no better way to do this but when life and humanity is frozen still. The poet wants to let the “aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,” this clearly portrays the poets desire for the whole world to see and be aware of his loss, we imagine he is scared of this idea of being alone but also thinks his loved one deserves to be remembered by everyone which is why the traffic plicemen should “wear black cotton gloves.” He wants everyone to share his pain, the pain he is experiencing after losing the person he loved the most. The speaker doesn't seem to realise that he is the only one able to feel what he is feeling and that it is not possible for everyone else to feel the same as they did not love as he did. His strong love for his lover is causing him to act irrationnaly almost becoming insane about the idea that his lovers death will be the center of everything in the world. The love the speaker had for his loved one was so strong this person meant the world to him, “he was my North, my South, my East and West,” this conveys the huge bond they had together, that idea that their love made them inseperable and that they completed eachother in every single way. The poet goes on to reveal the huge tragedy of life which is that life doesn't last forever and he thought that “love would last forever: I was wrong.” Life does not last forever which is why everyone ends up losing a loved one and here the poet suggests that love dies with your loved one. In this poem the poet suggests that strong love causes us to act in bizare ways as the “stars are not wanted now; put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun”.The pain of the loss is so strong that the speaker just wants to get rid of everything that reminds him of his loved one throwing away everything they had experienced together for the simple reason of not wanting to feel the pain of the loss any longer. In Funeral Blues the speaker has lost his loved one whereas in Lullaby the speaker is holding his lover in his arms. Similarly to Funeral Blues, in this poem Auden treats love as something that doesn't last forever as it dies “like vibrations of a bell”, Auden is aware that his time on earth with his lover is limited and he wants to make the most of every second of it since he wants him to stay “in my arms till break of day” and “not a whisper, not a thought, not a kiss nor look be lost”. The idea of not having forever with his lover seems to strengthen the speakers bond with his lover and his desire of not wasting a single moment more. Although the speaker cherishes his relationship he tries to bring love down to something ordinary as he introduces the image of lovers lying “In their ordinary swoon”. A swoon isn't something that is normally ordinary we can imagine here Auden is referring to sex and is suggesting it is something very common which all experience and doesn't distinguish a strong relationship from another. We can imagine he is trying to justify his “faithless arm” by saying that sex isn't important and shouldn't have an impact on a relationship. The mension of Venus creates a parallel with the fantastique, sublime vision of love and the ordinary one, Auden is trying to assert that a relationship shouldnt be built by the desire to equal the romantic ideals that “Venus sends” but it must be built on “human love”, an emotion that is ordinary and doesn't overstep into the unrealistic romantic ideals. In these two poems Auden comes about love in different ways, in one through the death of a loved he demonstrates how love is something that can cause us great pain